In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘No touching!’ shouted the gaoler. ‘Back there, he could snap your neck in a second.’

  Jacob stepped away, something round and hard pushed into his palm. He gazed down. It was a small round brooch.

  ‘Damn you!’ swore Willow. ‘I came here to reassure you and you dare to steal from me!’

  The guard drew a metal rod from his table, a rubber-insulated shaft of barbed steel that started sparking as soon as he pressed a button on its hilt. He strode around Willow. ‘You damn tinkers, you never learn,’ he snarled. ‘If it’s not tied down, you’ll steal it. Out of their reach, madam. A broken rib or two might teach these dogs to respect our house.’ He slapped his stick against the cage, and its bars sparked with energy, Sheplar yelping as he removed his fingers from the metal.

  The gaoler laughed, but the sound turned to a croak as Willow sapped him from behind, a little black sack weighted with lead dangling in her hand. He tumbled limply against the cage to fall still against the bars.

  ‘Give me the brooch,’ ordered Willow. Jacob passed it to her and she tossed it to the other cage where the woman imprisoned inside caught it,

  ‘My father sent you?’ said Hesia.

  ‘He told me you would recognise it,’ said Willow. ‘And that you’d take a chance at exile over an appointment with an imperial torturer.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, without hesitation. ‘I will, to save my sister’s life.’

  ‘A few more than that,’ said Jacob.

  Willow dipped down to the gaoler’s belt, removing a silver card tied to a keychain. She ran the card through a steel box against the wall, its hatch springing open and revealing the keys to every cage. Willow walked to the cell holding the Vandian woman first. ‘Your father told me there’s a fast long-range munitions ship on the field next to the kerosene-liquid-oxygen tanks, fully fuelled and due to leave soon. You can fly it to the sky mines?’

  ‘Cross the dead zone? But there’s nothing there. The southern border’s closer.’

  ‘We’re going north,’ said Willow, firmly. ‘Agree, or you can stay and your father can find another fool to take the blame for springing you.’

  ‘So be it.’ Hesia stared across at Jacob. ‘But I’ll have your word in return that you won’t let the empire take me alive. Put a bullet in my head or a blade in my heart if it comes to it.’

  Jacob nodded grimly from inside his cage. ‘You won’t fall into their hands alive… my word on it.’ That won’t be the difficult part in all this madness.

  Willow released the Vandian and then opened the Weylanders’ cage, Jacob and the others spilling out. Jacob lifted his gun belt off the hook on the wall and recovered his travel pack as his companions collected their possessions. Khow fiddled with his abacus box and had to be chivvied towards the chamber’s exit, vainly trying to calculate their fate as Sariel and Sheplar waited to brave the fortress proper.

  Hesia found a domed pilot’s helmet on a shelf, strapping it over her head and pulling down a mirrored visor to conceal her bruised face. She opened a locker with spare guard uniforms and tossed them at the Weylanders. ‘Put these on. The castle is still packed with guests who’ve travelled here for a diplomatic summit. If we are stopped, you are servants heading to the landing field to make your master’s craft ready to depart. We have at least an hour before the next gaoler’s shift starts.’

  Jacob was impressed she had watched the guards. He hadn’t spent enough time inside the holding area to work out the pattern. They had only just stepped into the corridor when Jacob halted them. ‘Forgot something. Wait here a second.’

  Jacob ducked back into the chamber, dragging the unconscious gaoler into a cage. Then he slipped his knife out, placed his hand hard over the man’s mouth and plunged the blade deep into his heart. The man trembled slightly in the second it took him to die; the gaoler’s last breath warm and faint against Jacob’s fingers. He could never be allowed to tell his mistress of Willow’s part in this. Let them wonder if she’d been abducted during the prison break. How many times had Jacob crawled across battlefields in the Burn to silence sentries like this? Years before, but now it was as though he had never buried his recollection of the act. His memories again, not those of another man. Jacob pulled the dirty white collar of a pastor from his shirt and tossed it into the pooling blood. The Vandians had stolen the quietest part of his life, ripped it right from him. Now they would face the rage that filled that silence. Jacob locked the door to the cage and rejoined the others.

  ‘You found what you forgot?’ asked Sheplar.

  Jacob grunted and they moved off. My soul be cursed, but I believe I have.

  Duncan went searching for his sister, leaving Lady Cassandra with Paetro; the young noblewoman hard at work in a draughty hall with one of the empire’s most famous gymnasts, balancing on a wooden horse while the tutor strode around her, barking out commands. It was typical of Willow to get lost so soon after she had arrived. True, the Castle of Snakes sprawled across the cliffs overlooking the sea, corridors and passages and chambers across multiple levels, below and above ground, but she should have wit enough to ask one of the house’s many retainers how to find her way back to her rooms. He reached the hangars with a view to going outside and checking the gardens when he noticed that Princess Helrena had arrived to greet new visitors. Duncan cursed his luck. Apolleon again, a retinue of hoodsmen standing menacingly at the man’s back. Whatever the head of the secret police wanted this time, he was going far beyond civility in demanding it. He appeared to be having a heated argument with the princess. With Apolleon’s party positioned in the middle of the open blast doors, the only way to avoid him would be to turn back. Duncan decided to walk past and hope he wasn’t noticed.

  ‘Where is he?’ insisted Apolleon. ‘The man you found in your garden?’

  ‘Man? You mean men… the travellers?’ said Helrena. ‘How do you know we caught a gang of tinkers in the grounds? And why are you wasting your time with such trivialities?’

  ‘This man,’ said Apolleon, flourishing a sheet of paper. It contained a sketch of an old bearded man who looked a lot like the vagrant who had arrived at the castle with Jacob Carnehan. ‘He is a criminal, a wily, dangerous foe of the imperium who has been on the run since before you were born.’

  ‘Dangerously drunk, perhaps,’ said Helrena. ‘They were in a stupor when my guards came across them and tossed them in a cage. I cannot confirm this man is the one you seek. I do not trouble myself with trespassers and itinerant squatters.’

  ‘You underestimate this radical at your peril,’ warned Apolleon. ‘He has as many aliases as you own slaves. This is Sariel Teller. Sariel Player. Sariel Skel-Bane. He has a knack of wriggling out of chains and slipping past sentries like a ghost. Send a company of soldiers to secure him… fully armed and armoured.’

  ‘For one dirty old man?’ said Helrena. She was looking at the nobleman as if he had lost his mind. ‘I have never even heard of this criminal?’

  Apolleon was practically shaking with anger, or was it fear? Surely he wasn’t scared of the elderly hobo Duncan had glimpsed in gaol alongside Jacob Carnehan? Northhaven’s expedition was a joke; a handful of expendables dispatched to a faraway death to assuage the guilt of Duncan’s father. What in the world could scare one of the most dangerous men in the imperium so badly? ‘Do not question me. Do as I say! He should be dead. He will be dead!’

  Helrena turned to her retinue. ‘Call the cell level, have them manacle the travellers and dispatch my private guard to bring them before us.’

  Poor, unlucky Jacob Carnehan. First most of his parish had been burnt to the ground, then his son had been enslaved, now he was going to be thrown to the not-so-tender mercies of the Vandian secret police. Duncan decided to idle behind the nearest helo and see how matters played out. Helrena didn’t look pleased in the slightest. Not at her rude treatment at the hands of a supposed ally, nor at the implications that the secret police had an unlimited number of informers among her staff. Maybe the old
vagrant Apolleon hunted had been hiding in exile inside one of the empire’s neighbours when Jacob’s craft landed for supplies, and the outlaw had seized his opportunity to join the expedition? If so, his urge to see his homeland again was going to cost him his life. But would it cost the pastor’s, too? Duncan sighed. He had hoped to help Jacob Carnehan return home. But if Apolleon got his hooks into the Weylander, then Carter’s father would be far beyond Duncan’s help.

  A soldier returned a second later, whispering in the princess’s ear. Helrena’s face turned white at the news. ‘All the travellers are gone! And Hesia with them! Is this Circae’s doing?’

  Apolleon roared a yell of anguish at the hangar’s roof. ‘I warned you! Seal off the castle, lock down the landing field. Search every turret and room, every inch and corner of the castle until you find him.’

  It wasn’t just the head of the secret police that was discomfited by the news of the escape. Duncan slipped out of the hangar, his walk becoming a sprint as he ran across the gardens and cliff defences, desperate to find his sister clearing her head in the open air. But Willow was nowhere to be found. All around him sirens began to wail. On the battlements of the wall facing the city’s towers and spires, across the hangars and the hulking concrete fortifications of the Castle of Snakes. Duncan checked the small woodland, the Stone Garden, the walks along the cliff defences, the gun emplacements facing the whipping sea. Patrols began to comb the grounds alongside him. Duncan was still searching half an hour later when a guardsman came dashing past and recognised him, stopping to jab a finger back towards the castle.

  ‘Orders from the princess. Head to the airfield and find the transport Paetro’s riding.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Climb in the helo alongside him. Apolleon is sending his personal warship to the landing island. We’re stripping the castle of every able-bodied man and joining his people on board to chase a skyjacked ship.’

  ‘Skyjacked?’ Duncan’s gut twisted at the news, all the horrifying implications flashing through his mind at once. Willow. Damn you!

  ‘One of our supply runners has vanished, its pilots found stuffed dead under the field’s fuel tanks. As soon as we know what direction it’s headed, we’re following.’

  Duncan turned away so that the man couldn’t see the painful web of emotions playing across his face, and then scurried towards the castle. He could guess which direction the stolen ship would be heading. The sky mines. And he knew why Willow was missing, too. In her fit of jealous pique, she’d finally found a way to ruin everything Duncan had achieved here. He’d won Willow her freedom and this was how she repaid him? And now he was being ordered to hunt down his own sister, while her selfishness meant Paetro would be forced to stalk and shoot his own daughter, all in the name of duty. And for what? So Carter Carnehan could enjoy a pitiful last hour in the company of his father before the entire might of the imperium bore down to slaughter a ragtag band of slaves and outlaws? Willow. Even here, the Landor name and the Landor line could reach out to curse him. He felt like letting rip to the sky with a similar roar of rage to Apolleon’s. Instead he sprinted towards the airfield, towards the whipping noise of a dozen squadrons of helos rising into the sky to start the pursuit. You’ve brought this on yourself, Willow. Everything that happens. It’s all on you now.

  Jacob was finally able to rise out of the padded chair in the cockpit, muscles aching and pulsing in protest. He had never thought it possible to travel so fast that his body became as weighted as if he had been recast in lead, the air itself exploding as their vessel speared above the imperium. At least the extreme speed had stopped Sheplar appearing from alongside Sariel in the cargo hold, to annoy the female pilot with endless questions over the ship’s design and the function of every knob and switch on her control panel.

  ‘I’m decelerating,’ announced Hesia. ‘Dropping filters over our engine intakes.’

  Jacob saw why. A rolling grey cloud lurked beyond the cockpit’s canopy, the patter of ash and dust starting against their airframe and growing louder. ‘Sweet mercy! What is that?’

  ‘A proto-eruption,’ said Willow. ‘They can rumble on for weeks before the stratovolcano starts to blow in earnest.’

  ‘And my son is on a mining station tethered above that?’ The land they’d already passed over was bad enough. Scoured of all greenery, empty river beds and mile after mile of smoking rock. Only the occasional ground-based mining operation to break up the landscape, vast steel fortresses on tracks slowly picking their way through the volcano’s lesser mineral fall. The blackened hellish vista seemed limitless, even at the almost inconceivable speeds they had been hitting.

  ‘That’s why the empire uses slaves here,’ said Willow. The girl was so matter of fact and cold she made Jacob grimace. He’d had a chance to have a closer look at her now. Willow was a lot gaunter than he remembered her. Her brother had regained his frame living high on the hog with the Vandians but there wasn’t much of a healthy sheen about Willow Landor. She still had the hungry, quick eyes of a slave; flitting around the Vandians’ ship, restlessly searching for the next threat. He had seen that look before, among the starved peasants of the Burn. Cannon fodder who expected nothing more from a new encounter than theft, murder or a flogging.

  ‘Dropping altitude,’ announced Hesia, and Jacob felt the deck fall away from his boots. ‘I’m hugging the deck. Trading speed for stealth. We shouldn’t meet any slave patrol ships flying so low. They’ll have gone for height, trying to get over the worst of that.’

  ‘Just take us to the station,’ said Willow.

  ‘And there are no guards in the sky mines?’ asked Jacob. ‘No soldiers?’

  ‘Not unless the princess managed to send them ahead of us,’ said Hesia. She indicated the lifeless plains flashing past below. ‘Hunger and thirst make the best sentry of all. No work, no water.’

  And his son had been marooned out here all this time? They might as well have stranded Carter in the central circle of hell.

  ‘Carter will be safe,’ said Willow, picking up on his worries. But she sounded too much as though she were trying to convince herself.

  ‘I can sense my child,’ said Khow, excited. ‘Kerge is close. It is as though I could reach outside and touch him.’

  Hesia jerked her thumb towards the hatch at the rear of the cockpit. ‘Go down to the cargo hold and bring your kite-flying mountain man up here. I need him to sit on the scope and keep an eye behind us.’ Willow heeded the pilot’s instructions and left to retrieve the Rodalian.

  Jacob felt a bite of fear. ‘We’re being pursued?’

  ‘Not yet, not the way I’m bouncing us about. But they’ll piece our route together soon enough, if only from plantation owners arriving at garrisons and demanding compensation for us stampeding herds and shattering farmhouse windows.’

  Their jouncing grew worse, the bombardment of grit swelling louder and larger. Hesia activated a steel mesh that folded down across the cockpit glass. The ship’s triangular wings were visible beyond the canopy, shrugging off debris like a cloud of rain.

  ‘We’ll hold?’ asked Jacob.

  Hesia shrugged. ‘We’re not rated for the dead zone. This bird was scheduled to fly to the house’s holdings in the eastern provinces. Munitions and weapons for our line of forts out there. Just an engine, long-range fuel tanks and a large cargo hold welded together. Our armour’s to protect us against rifle fire from the ground, not this. There’s one piece of good news: if we’re holed, the weight of explos­ives on board means that at least we’ll have an instant death.’

  ‘I haven’t travelled this far to be blown to pieces an hour before I reach my son.’

  ‘No? Well, the people in the capital might not care about a few runaway slaves and foreigners, but I’ve betrayed my house twice. For me, there’s no distance Helrena Skar won’t travel to settle that score.’

  Jacob could see the stratovolcano’s lower slopes moving towards them through the dark shower, sandwiched betw
een the ground below and the black clouds above. If this was just the opening salvo, how bad would the storm grow when the volcano moved towards a full eruption? The volcano’s rise came closer and closer. Hesia banked her craft with a view to climbing towards the sky mine.

  ‘Manling!’ said Khow from the back of the cockpit. He pointed out of a side-port towards the ground.

  Jacob went to the gask and followed the direction of his leathery finger. Khow had picked out a feature by the base of the volcano. A circle of menhirs below, the ancient standing stones seeming at home in this bleak, deadly land. ‘I see them.’

  ‘Will the stones activate for Sariel,’ wondered Khow, ‘without the assistance of the great diviner?’

  Jacob glanced towards the cargo hold. He could hear Willow and Sheplar climbing up the metal stairs. It was a good question. With more riding on the outcome than Jacob wanted to dwell on right now. Sariel hadn’t been himself since they had arrived in Vandia. His stories had dried up, few tall tales and boasts. The bard had drawn into himself. It reminded Jacob of Carter’s brothers in the last days of their fever. You always knew you were in trouble when a sick child stopped complaining, growing worryingly silent.

  ‘And even if the stones are still active,’ added Khow, ‘if Sariel cannot control them properly, we could end up anywhere in the world.’

  Jacob cleared his throat. It had turned dry and worried inside the Vandian vessel. ‘Anywhere in the world that isn’t the empire. I can live with that, friend.’

  Sheplar took the gask’s seat, following Hesia’s instructions for operating the radar. Kerge left for the cargo hold to help calm Sariel. Relying on the unstable bard to escape Vandia? Jacob prayed the gask proved successful.

  Hesia had flown supply runs to the sky mines often enough to be able to locate the station, even in the thick hot clouds and debris. A couple of minutes later the station came into view through the squall of gas and super-heated debris.

  ‘Trying to raise their radio room,’ said Hesia. ‘No response. It must be down for maintenance.’